


we looked like giants

by anneweaver



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, pointless and self-indulgent aus, this is what happens when i get obsessed with songs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2014-03-11
Packaged: 2018-01-15 08:03:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1297498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneweaver/pseuds/anneweaver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The girl says “I’m Jemma, by the way” without even looking up.</p><p>When he lands, he shouts “Leo” and starts walking toward the familiar trees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we looked like giants

He’s seventeen when the house next door is suddenly alive again. The window of his room is right in front of a bedroom that, after five months of emptiness and silence, is now full of boxes and people and movement.

He very pointedly doesn’t look when he notices a girl that looks about his age staring at him.

When his mom shouts, from the first floor, “Leo! I’m going to greet our new neighbors, do you want to come and say hello?”, he doesn’t answer.

-//-

Behind the backyard of his house, there’s a big forest. He used to be afraid of it when he was a boy, back when his brothers were still at home and would make up stories about ghosts and witches and terrifying wolves that were after him.

He forgot about those stories around the same time he forgot about his brothers, and on the nights where he couldn’t sleep, he’d sneak out through his window and wander mindlessly around the woods, learning every path and every tree.

The first time he sneaks out after the new neighbors move in, the girl is sitting on the windowsill. She fixes her gaze on him, but doesn’t say anything.

-//-

He’s sitting beside the window, reading, when she starts watering the plants on her backyard. He puts the book down and just observes, the way she twirls around and jumps and seems to caress every leaf before watering it.

When she cuts a flower and tucks it behind her ear, he thinks of spring.

-//-

He learns her name on a Sunday morning. He’s climbing out of the window to go for a walk when he hears someone saying “isn’t it a bit late to sneak out?”

He looks at her, and she’s staring, eyebrows raised and elbows propped on her windowsill, a closed book resting between her arms.

“It’s never late to sneak out,” he replies, but doesn’t move one inch. Instead, he asks “isn’t it a bit early to read?” and she lets out a melodic laugh.

“It’s never early to read.” she answers, simply, and goes back to her book. He sighs and prepares to jump down, and the girl says “I’m Jemma, by the way” without even looking up.

When he lands, he shouts “Leo” and starts walking toward the familiar trees.

-//-

When he was a kid, he would stay awake until dawn, reading. He stopped for many reasons, mainly because his father stopped coming home and bringing him books.

Jemma reads until dawn every day. He notices because the faint light of her lamp breaks through his window every night without fail, because she’s stopped closing the curtains of her bedroom.

One night, he forgets to close his own curtains, and the familiar light coming from her bedroom helps him sleep.

-//-

“Do you ever sleep?” he asks one night when he spots her resting against the window frame. A hint of a smile appears on her lips.

“I could ask you the same thing.” she retorts, and he has to laugh -- he’s better rested now _because_ she doesn’t sleep. “But yes, I do sleep. Just- not during the night.”

He smiles at her, wide, and she smiles back.

-//-

It’s a Thursday, and his mother is yelling at the phone downstairs. He’s getting increasingly worried because she _never_ yells. Not even at him. She’ll shout at him to tell him dinner’s ready, and sometimes he’ll hear her singing loudly when she’s dusting the house. But he’s never heard her yell before.

When he hears “you _left_ him, you don’t get to pretend to be a dad anymore” he opens up the window and starts making his way down.

Jemma is, as usual, sitting on her windowsill, and she doesn’t even bother to greet him before asking “what is it with you and that forest anyway?”

If he trusted his voice enough not to betray him, he would answer. Instead, he raises his eyebrows at her and starts making his way to the woods.

That’s the first time she follows.

-//-

They’ve been sitting on a fallen tree for a long time, in silence, when he asks “don’t you have a class to go to?” and Jemma shrugs.

“I can afford to skip classes every once in a while, it’s not like I need the grades,” she answers, and then looks at him for the first time since they left their houses before saying “you seemed upset this morning,” and it’s his turn to shrug.

“It was nothing, really,” he says, and the smile he gives her doesn’t reach his eyes at all.

-//-

His sleepless nights become Jemma Simmons, after that morning. He knows how to climb walls since he was ten, and her wall isn’t much different than his.

He spends the nights where he can’t sleep in her room, and when they’re not talking she’s showing him all the books she’s read. Suddenly, it’s like she’s lived in the room in front of his all his life, and he can’t sleep anymore without the light of her lamp breaking through his window.

-//-

“My mom used to say,” she whispers on a Thursday morning, “that I’m like Rapunzel. Trapped inside my room.”

They’re laying on top of the wet leaves covering the ground, as they usually do on Thursday mornings, and they have been silent most of the time; it’s their thing, sort of, being in silence around each other. When Jemma speaks up, he has to smile.

“Not to ruin the moment, but I think Rapunzel’s hair is much longer,” he says, and she rolls her eyes.

“It’s not like you need my abnormally long hair to climb up the wall to my room every night,” she replies. He turns his body to face hers, props his head on his hand and raises his eyebrows.

“Are you saying I’m your prince in this scenario?” he asks, and she closes her eyes and smiles.

“Maybe.”

When she cuts a flower and tucks it behind her ear, he thinks, if spring were to take human form, it would look like her.

-//-

1\. Her mom offered her a car and she asked for a bicycle instead. She never uses it.

2\. Her family moved to the house next door because she got offered a position on an governmental agency and she declined.

3\. She never told her family the real reason why she declined, but, as she’s laying with him under the stars, she tells him she was afraid they would notice how average she really is.

4\. She says she used to be brilliant. He doesn’t understand the use of the past tense.

5\. When her mother called her Rapunzel, she cried all night long.

6\. She closes her eyes, like she’s concentrating hard on something, whenever he starts running his fingers through her hair.

7\. The first time he kisses her, her lips taste like the pages of an old book.

-//-

“You know,” he says one night he’s sprawled on her bed watching her read, “my mom gave me a car for my sixteenth birthday and I’ve only ever used it twice.”

She puts the book down and looks at him, eyebrows raised, like she’s trying to find a hidden meaning in his words, says “what are you getting at?” and he closes his eyes.

“I’m just- I’m just saying, maybe we should-” She places her hand, softly, on his mouth, and smiles.

“Say no more.”

-//-

The first time she climbs to his room, he reads random passages of her favorite books to her. She says his voice is soothing, and he knows she could use all the soothing, so she lays down and rests her head on his lap, and he reads aloud to her and runs his fingers through her hair.

She falls asleep before midnight.

-//-

For all the time they spend in their rooms, it’s actually the backseat of his car the place where, one April night, their shadows merge and make them look like giants. It’s the uncomfortable leather, the one that supports her weight, and his on top of hers, the one that witnesses every soft touch and every fiery kiss and the way their limbs tangle around each other and how they learn each other’s bodies, over and over again.

His mom sleeps, oblivious, while they make their way to his room and hold each other, closer than anybody would ever get.

-//-

“Has it ever occurred to you,” he starts, and she turns around to look at him, “that your parents might be better off without you?”

The idea first got into his mind when he was thirteen. He didn’t go through with it, mostly because he was everything his mother had at the time, but it’s always been a nagging thought at the back of his mind; he could leave for good, invent a life for himself that didn’t include an absent father and older brothers and a mother that, while always meaning good, isn’t the mother figure he needs.

The day she followed him into the woods, he started seeing her in the passenger seat.

When she looks at him and says “every single day since I declined the offer,” he knows she’ll follow him out of the woods too.

-//-

The bag she brings along only has her favorite books. She reads them aloud to him and only interrupts her reading to ask him questions about the stars.

When she rolls the window down, the warm air distinctive to the beginning of summer fills the car.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title (and 99% of the inspiration for this fic) comes from the song We Looked Like Giants by Death Cab For Cutie.  
> Also, thanks to [Shruti](http://leopoldfitz.tumblr.com) for being an awesome beta and [Emma](http://rainamavias.co.vu/) and all the cadets for cheerleading.


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